17
D illon returned to the station in midafternoon. He spent half an hour with Maud, going through queries from the state auditor, helping her with the proper wording and correct numbers. Most of it was make-work, demands for more detail from a man who would have preferred to give them nothing. Maud finally rose from her desk and told him to sit and do it himself, which was what he had been after all along. Another two hours and the forms were completed, the questions answered, the petty demands met. Dillon showered and dressed in clean but severely wrinkled clothes, and was standing outside when Porter emerged from his office. “You seen Olivia?”
“I thought she was with you.”
“She left a while back for Gleason’s.” He adjusted his hat, said, “I’ve got to get on home. If you see the lady, tell her however the pictures turn out, she’s already done us a world of good.”
“Will do.”
Five minutes after the chief departed, Olivia entered the front lot.
She was smiling.
It was not like she had cast aside her shadows. They were stained deep in her being, they still fractured her gaze. All there for anyone who knew her well enough to peer beneath the surface. Just the same, her smile was a thing of beauty. Dillon said, “You remind me of a girl I once knew. I always thought her smile was meant for someone twice her size.”
“I’ve been doing some very good work.”
“I’m glad. Really, really glad. Porter basically said the same.”
“He hasn’t seen the photographs yet.”
“It sounded like just having the session with you was important.” He took a long moment, studying her in their narrow shelter from the rain, glad in a strange way they were here. Together. In this moment. “I have a date.”
“Whoa, Dillon. Who put the tiger in your tank?”
“That would be Bailey.”
“Bailey, as in Griff’s . . .”
“Ex. Right. Her.”
She turned and studied the dimming light. Dillon was suddenly fearful he had done a bad thing. Stolen away the woman’s momentary happiness. Then she said, “In our hardest moments, when I was far enough from you and us to think outside the cage, I wondered.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you calling what we had a cage.”
“Two people fighting, no holds barred,” she said, addressing the gentle mist. “What would you call it?”
He decided that was a good moment to stay silent. “I wondered,” she repeated. “Maybe Bailey was a better fit.”
“I never thought that,” he said.
“No?”
“Not for a single solitary instant.”
“But here you are.” She looked at him, the smile still there, but filled with the wisdom of ages. And the sorrow. “Dressed in your finest duds.”
“Hoping the wrinkles will fall out before she shows up.”
“Too late.” Olivia pointed to the car pulling through the main gates. “Here she comes now.”
“So you’re okay with this.”
“Better than okay.” She surprised him anew, reaching up and encircling her arms around his neck. A quick embrace, a wave to the lady driving the SUV, then she reached for the door and said, “Have a wonderful time.”
When Dillon slipped into the car, Bailey greeted him with, “What was that I just saw?”
He watched Olivia step through the rain-swept doors. “Just being friends.”
* * *
Bailey’s home occupied the nether region north of town. That was what her parents called it, back when they welcomed him as easily and warmly as they might a close relative. Her father was a physio and chiropractor working out of the local hospital’s rehab unit. Bailey’s mom was a Pilates and yoga instructor long before it became all the rage. Dillon considered them the sort of people who defined the best California had to offer. Easygoing, self-contained, stoic, unflappable, honest. They cared without gushing. They gave, expecting nothing in return. Being accepted into their home was a princely reward.
They were a tight couple, calm in their ways and deeply in love. What they thought of Bailey’s choice in a mate, they never said. As best man Dillon had been seated at the head table, and though both dabbed at tears during the festivities, neither had a harsh word or warning, not then nor in all the preceding months after Bailey declared Griff was the one. Her lifetime partner.
The nether region was their name for homes dotting the northern headlands. There was no beach, just cliffs and a few scraggly cattle who were gradually replaced by ever grander houses. Theirs was a sprawling ranch, cluttered and comfortable. Neither parent held much interest in housekeeping. Their rear door was always open to Dillon. Right up to the last few weeks of his life in Miramar, sweating over his applications to grow university-style wings. They were the ones who shared the desperate hope and fear. The only ones.
They occupied a new home now, a smaller version of the place Bailey claimed as her own, set against the far fence and separated by a new stand of fast-growing firs. Their neighborhood still had power, an illuminated peninsula jutting from a rain-darkened land. Dillon stopped by there first, and saw in the calm expressions a mirror into the good times. The ones too easily dismissed by a man fighting so hard to get away.
When he bade them goodnight and took the walk back up toward the house, a dark-haired sprite stood by the rear door. “You’re Dillon and I’m Elena.”
Which meant she was named after Griff’s mother. “Hi, Elena. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“That’s because you don’t know me.” She spun on her heel and danced through the door. “Just wait. Mom says I grow on people like bed lice.”
“I said no such thing!”
“You thought it. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong!”
“Ha.” She danced back to Dillon. “This afternoon I heard Mom tell her best friend you were the lover she never had.”
“Elena Elizabeth Long, I am going wring your neck!”
Dillon followed her through the glassed-in garden room and into the kitchen, where a crimson-faced Bailey said, “Now is the perfect time for you to take my car and drive off into the sunset.”
“Too late,” Elena said. “Sunset’s over.”
“Go watch television. Read a book. Do math. Enjoy your final days on earth.” Bailey’s hands stayed busy washing vegetables. “I actually don’t know what to say.”
Dillon thought it best to change the subject. “Your mom said to tell you she has fresh sourdough coming out of the oven.”
“Elena, go get us a loaf.”
“Hokey-pokey.”
“Better still, ask them if you can move in until you turn thirty.”
“She’ll laugh in my face.”
When the child departed, Dillon said, “She’s so much like her father it makes my eyes burn.”
“I know, right?”
Dillon watched the rain spatter against the glass door.
“Go ahead and ask.” When Dillon remained silent, Bailey said it for him. “How could Griff walk away from raising this amazing child? He never said. But I think it’s two things.”
“He’s the veritable Peter Pan,” Dillon said, watching the empty yard. “He’d rather die than grow up.”
“That’s true, but it’s only part of the whole story.” Bailey set an iron skillet on the stove, added butter and olive oil. “I think Elena scares him. He can only take her in measured doses.”
“Scared of what?”
Bailey started to speak, then shook her head and simply replied, “You’ll see.”
Dinner was a Spanish omelet with home fries, sourdough with honey for dessert. Their living-dining room was dominated by a Christmas tree minus lights. There were baubles, cute sections of ribbons tied in bows, a teddy bear with wings at its peak.
Elena said, “Mom was too lazy to unravel last year’s knot of fairy lights.”
“It wasn’t funny the first time, and you’ve been going downhill ever since. Now tell him the truth.”
“Boring.” When Bailey shot her a mom-look, Elena’s voice became robotic. “No Christmas lights because we need to keep from overloading the already strained electrical grid. This is Mayor Mom’s way of setting a good example.”
The meal became spiced by Elena’s tale of her last trip to Cabo. Learning how to dive with tanks, apparently something her horrified mother only learned about this very moment. Spearing a tuna, eating sushi on the boat’s rear deck. Both ladies easy and happy and sad over Dillon’s absent friend.
As they cleaned up, Elena gave a mock sigh and said, “I suppose now is the time you’ll be telling me to scamper.”
“It’s what you deserve,” her mother replied. “Chained in your room until you turn thirty.”
But Dillon said, “Don’t go.” When both mother and child showed surprise, he said, “It’s been a long time since I was inside a happy family.”
Bailey stopped in the process of loading the dishwasher and stared at her daughter. “You can stay.”
“Mom . . .”
“It’s okay,” Bailey told her. “I’ll behave.”
“Behave, as in, not bawling your eyes out again?”
“Promise.”
Dillon asked, “What exactly is going on here?” “My sweet darling child wants to grow up too soon,” Bailey said. “If she gets her wish, this spring she’ll be leaving me and Miramar behind.”
Dillon looked from one to the other. “You’re moving to Cabo?”
Bailey laughed. Or tried to. “Not on your sweet bippy. Go ahead, darling. Tell our guest about what else you did in Cabo.”
“Daddy took me to the casino in his hotel.”
“And gave her two hundred dollars in chips,” Bailey added. “And let her play blackjack. At the grown-up table. Welcome to Mexico.”
“This is for real?”
“Go ahead, my little innocent dumpling. Tell.”
“Daddy taught me to count cards.”
“This was Giff’s idea of how to spend happy evenings playing father,” Bailey said.
“It was interesting at first,” Elena said. “But it got real boring real fast.”
“Counting cards,” Dillon said. “Boring.”
“I won sixteen hundred dollars,” Elena said. “That part wasn’t boring.”
“Her daddy was soooo proud,” Bailey said.
“So . . . not Cabo.” Dillon looked from one to the other. “Then . . .”
“Santa Barbara,” Elena replied, watching her mother. “Mom, you promised.”
Bailey heaved a great huge sigh. “I’m a mayor. Mayors can control their tear ducts. It’s part of our training.”
Dillon asked, “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
“My daughter has her heart set on attending the state school for gifted children . . .”
“Mom!”
“I’m okay.”
Dillon asked, “What does that mean, gifted?”
“When my angel with the fractured halo was four, she was seated inside the grocery trolley, you know what I mean, right?”
“Of course.”
“Mom loves telling this story,” Elena said. “It might almost be true.”
“There she was, watching the clerk ring up my groceries. When the woman was done, this little child sings out the exact amount. Before the number appeared on the register.”
“Whoa.”
“Exactly.”
Dillon said, “So you’re a math whiz.”
“I might become one,” Elena replied. “Someday. If I can only work out the Everest of problems that is standing between me and the school . . . Mom.”
“Observe. This is me staying supportive and dry-eyed.”
Elena gave a hugely exasperated sigh. “I have to submit this concept. Something that shows I can think outside the box. It’s not enough that I know numbers. They are looking for . . .”
Dillon offered, “Originality.”
“Of course not.” She offered him the same sort of exasperation she’d shown her mother. “I’m ten. ”
“They require her to show an ability to think, to reason, to explore,” Bailey said. “Their exact words.”
Dillon gave that the beat it deserved, then said, “I might be able to help with that.”
Elena gave him a very womanly look. Out of the side of her eyes, tight, suspicious, timeless. “Oh really.”
Dillon nodded. “Can I use your laptop?”